InstallShield Basic MSI optimizations

Question

My InstallShield 2009 basic MSI project installs pretty slowly. We have a 65MB .msi and a 110MB .cab. The project was upgraded from IS12, using which it took about half as long to install.

Did the 2009 upgrade make some default modifications that I can reverse? Are there any general optimizations that can speed up basic MSI projects? Maybe removing some un-needed standard actions, etc...

Any suggestions or leads greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The phrase I emphasized in the paragraph below, found on this page describing possible issues upgrading to 2009, could be taken as a euphamism:

Previously, InstallShield did not include any support for compressing files that were streamed into the Setup.exe file or the ISSetup.dll file at build time. Thus, if you compare a release that was built in InstallShield 2008 or earlier with the same release that is built with the default compression level in InstallShield 2009, you may notice that the file size of Setup.exe or ISSetup.dll is slightly different. In addition, the time that is required to extract files may be slightly different.

In IS2009, can you change from the compression level or turn it off completely and rebuild your project to see if it's any faster built that way?

Answer 2

I had a similar problem going from IS12 to 2008, eventually I just bit the bullet and rebuilt the project from scratch (using a bit of import/export for certain dialogs, registry entries, etc)